By the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board The LA Times weighed in today with its endorsements for the LA Unified school board, backing two of three incumbents in the March 3 elections but both with language that suggests moderate misgivings. The editorial board recommends Tamar Galatzan for board District 3 although the support “comes with...

By Steve Zimmer The vicious lies contained in the California Charter School Association (CCSA) mailer represent a new low in school board campaign tactics. They attack not only Bennett Kayser’s service to his district but his heart and his soul as well. I know these attacks.  They were leveled at me, my life work and...

“Forty years ago we were in competition with private schools. Now, we’re in competition with charters.” That was LA Unified board vice president Steve Zimmer yesterday, speaking at a board committee meeting where the issue at hand was district enrollment. The number of kids attending the district’s traditional schools has been declining since 2003, now...

LA Unified’s latest offer to the teachers union, UTLA, represents either a hint of progress in negotiations for the teachers’ first contract in more than seven years or fertile ground for moving toward a strike. Here’s why the uncertainty: The 6 percent package includes the same salary increase that the district has offered all its...

By Michelle Crames My daughter started Kindergarten this year, and part of why I enrolled her in public school was that things were getting better, and my belief that our family’s energy and resources could contribute to bettering our community. Two months after her start, we learn that Superintendent John Deasy, who has provided leadership...

Probably no one has flunked retirement worse than Ray Cortines.  At 82, he’s signed on to steer the Los Angeles Unified School District for the third time. Twice before he served as an interim superintendent, and he held the post for three years immediately before John Deasy’s tenure. Cortines understands big city school systems.  In...

What a momentous day it was. One superintendent out. Another steps in. The LA Unified community and social media were alive with chatter — people sorry to see John Deasy go, people celebrating his departure, people happy to see Ray Cortines return for a third deployment, people wondering what the school board was smoking in...

So now we have a hint of what the LA Unified board members were discussing during the four hours they met in private Tuesday night. Part of the conversation dealt with finding a way to reach a financial settlement with Superintendent John Deasy to remove him from his post, as the LA Times reported this morning....

Via LA Times | by Jim Newton There’s a storm cloud gathering over Los Angeles politics these days, and the man at its center is schools Supt. John Deasy. In office since 2010, Deasy has fenced with his bosses, the seven-member school board, almost from the get-go. Lately, however, the situation has deteriorated: United Teachers Los...

Via LA Times | by the TImes Editorial Board At L.A. Unified, tensions are high and crisis is in the air. The relationship between Supt. John Deasy and the school board that oversees him is at what is perhaps an all-time low. Deasy is again muttering about quitting; others are grumbling that he should be...